It's About to Get Real

This post is the first in the series, Get Real. Please stay tuned as I go through this journey of self discovery.

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you probably know that the quantity of my posts has severely decreased. There are many reasons for this and I'm sure I've addressed it before. But have I really been honest?

I want to say that I have. I want to say that when I look back on this blog I'm going to read it like I would an old diary or journal. Actually, it will probably be worse. I'll probably be more mortified because this is public, my old diaries are not.

Very quickly after I got married life got hard. That's not to say that my life didn't have sweet moments or fulfilling ones. It just got hard. We were looking to rent, and somehow we ended up buying a foreclosure. I damaged one at that.

We moved into my father-in-laws house and immediately started construction to make it livable. Now, when you picture any newlywed, moving into an in-laws house, having construction done on their first home... It sounds like it could be a TV show. Everyone knows marriage is hard. But everyone thinks that newlyweds go through this blissful stage their first year. Yeah, no. That so doesn't happen. It would be amazing if the first year of marriage was like two sides of a zipper, fitting together perfectly and securely.

Unfortunately, people are not perfectly cut. We are jagged and broken, we have scabs and scars. It's hard to fit two jagged pieces together, isn't it? Same with people. Taking two lives and melding them into one smooth operating machine is a pipe dream. It's hard with a capital H.

I'm NOT saying it can't be easy. There are personalities that are just easy. I am SURE that more than a few people would be like, our first year of marriage was full of rainbows, unicorns and butterflies! However, in our case it wasn't.

We had fitting-together pains. Heaped upon that were the growing pains of buying a house, coupled with living with an in-law. Topped with a cherry of working 40 hours a week while trying to make sure the contractor freaking. showed. up.

You know those people that can handle fifty-thousand stressful things at once, all day, every day and they are fine? More than that, they live for it? Hi. I'm not one of those people. I'm great under pressure. I can juggle a thousand things at work. What I cannot do is juggle a stressful job, a stressful relationship, a stressful marriage, a stressful house, physical and financial stress all at the same time. I can handle some of those things together, but not all of them at the exact same time.

To bring it all together, for the past two years and five months I've been dealing with all of those together. And after a while of pushing through I just gave up. I stopped fighting. I don't have the motivation to fight all of them at once. I do the bare minimum in order to survive. I don't feel like I am thriving right now.

I feel like I suck at life because when I wake up in the morning I groan and think, "No. Not again." I get ready and head to a stressful job that I love. After 7-8 hours, I drive home to a stressful husband that I love. The last thing I want to do is clean the litter box. Or make dinner. Or THINK of making dinner. I don't want to scrub toilets or floors. And ew, don't even talk to me about exercising. I do the bare minimum to just get through the day. If I have to do laundry I'll do it. If I have to go grocery shopping I'll go.

Where is my joy? My zest or zeal for life? I'm a Christian and I feel like a failure because I pray every day for God to change my heart. I 'fake it' hoping that he'll follow through on my actions with feeling. So far, it hasn't happened.

I hope this doesn't sounds complainy. That's not my intention. I am not unhappy. (Well, I am unhappy about how much a weigh. Gross.) But, I'm missing a key ingredient in my life. I feel like a cake that is sunken in the middle. Why?

In an effort to be as cheesy as possible, that is the million dollar question. Why do I feel this way? Where is my joy? What can I do to fix this? Is it even fixable? Can I strip my feelings down to find the source?

I'll be posting as I go through this journey. I don't know if it'll be every day, once a week, or once a month. This is all in real time, so however long it takes I'll be writing.

The Weekend

Sometimes, having a day to sleep in, watching your husband play Zelda while casually flipping through magazines is just what the doctor ordered.

Oh, and painting your nails? The cherry on top. :)

My Life

My life is:
complicated.
lazy.
busy.
hectic.
annoying.
blessed.

I lose sight of whats important. And the 'free time' I have? I don't want to spend it scrubbing toilets and floors, doing laundry and cleaning up after myself, Bryan and the dogs. I want to have fun!

So, what I'm trying to say is that I'm a slacker.

I've been having a hard time getting motivated to do ANYTHING. Even blog. I suck.

Here are some recent photos of my life:

I made my FIRST pizza from scratch. Its Margherita pizza with chicken, basil and oven roasted tomatoes! I made the pizza dough from scratch by following this recipe. The only thing I would have done differently is I would have made the crust waaay thinner. I do not like my pizza to be bready. Yuck!

This is Bryan standing in front of only a small part of Morro Rock. We walked all around it and I got to meet my FIRST Saint Bernard dog. His name was Wally. I need one STAT.

This is Bryan in a tree in Los Osos. It was a perfect climbing tree!

Before Bryan and I headed off to Los Osos and Morro Bay, Bryan played at Harris Ranch. He's an amazing musician! My favorite cover song of his is Last Kiss by Pearl Jam. He was singing that when I took this picture. You can check out his stuff here.

I saw this AH-MAZING desk at a thrift store in Temecula the week before last. I wish i would have bought it. :(

A terrible picture of me but a cute picture of the birthday girl, my sister Alison! We went to San Diego for her 30th birthday and we had a blast!

I was going through old pictures, and I came across this one of my Dad. Since we aren't on speaking terms, I don't have to worry about him getting mad at me for posting him looking like an old portuguese lady. :)

I'm going to hopefully bust a$$ in the house this weekend so I'll have some updates for next week! 

It Hurts

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOOOOTBALL??? Wrap-up? Except... not really.

Yesterday was the Superbowl and more importantly, was an excused day to eat 7 layer dip and lemon bars.  Didn't you hear? Calories don't exist on Superbowl Sunday. ;)

While we only watched the coin toss, the half-time show and the last minute of the game because we don't really care much about football, it was still a nice day.

Sorta.

There was a bunch of drama between my alcoholic father and me.... and I ended up getting a pretty gnarly headache.

Luckily, I was able to tough it out because Bryan and I invited Denise and Bryan's cousin Ali to come over to watch movies and eat food. I sat there with a heating pad on my head, drugged up, and I kept repeating, "Bryan, shhhh... you are too loud!" and "No, Bryan! I don't want to drink any alcohol. I'm drugged right now!"

But around 6, my head started feeling WAY better, I was finally able to have a lemon bar and a little more dip, and we watched That Thing You Do. Love that movie! I made minestrone soup in the crock pot for our dinners this week, and I made enough to freeze half for another meal later on. Woohoo!

All in all, it was a fine Superbowl Sunday.

Yesterday was just another instance of how devastating it is to have someone that you love be addicted to drugs, alcohol or involved with other styles of destructive behavior. I feel so sad for my Dad, for my family, because this will never end. It's the same cycle over and over again.

It's especially hard because while I can usually deal with it in (what I can only hope is) a healthy way, it still is a constant in my life. It's always there, looming around the corner. It's a major pain, emotionally and physically to deal with someone that is so all over the place. Especially when they are 'normal', they are amazing. Its like mourning the death of one of your favorite people all the time. Over and over again.

I don't want anything bad to happen to my Dad. But at the same time, I want this cycle to end. I want it to be over. I hate the roller coaster of it all. The mean words, the broken promises, the pretending. It's all so heavy that I just don't to deal with it anymore. Even if I pulled away and cut all communication, I would still think about it and wonder. And miss out on the good times that come around every once in a while.

It just is what it is, I guess. But it still hurts.

Things are Not-At-All as Kinky as They Seem...

Have you ever gotten home, fell on your bed and never got up again? No?

No?

Then I definitely did not get home last night 8:15 in the pm, take off my pants and fall into bed without even plugging in my cell phone. I did not stay in bed until I fell asleep at 10 and I did not sleep through the night until 7:15 without so much as waking up when Duey sneaked his way onto the bed.

Nosiree.

I got home last night, did an hour of yoga, cleaned my whole house top to bottom, made cookies for my husband and caught up on all the laundry.

Okay, okay. Was it the yoga or the cleaning my house that gave it away?

I was so, so, massively burned out last night that when I got home from my CASA training, I did that movie star thing where as you walk, more and more clothes come off until you fall into bed thing. Except usually movies have two people doing that. I just had one. My husband found me snuggled in bed in the dark about 15 minutes later.

Bryan: Whatcha dooooin?

Me: I'm in bed.

Bryan: I see that. Want to watch a movie?

Me: I can't.

Bryan: Why?

Me: Because I'm in bed.

Bryan: Why?

Me: Because I can't move anymore. I need to just stop. No phone, no computer, no movies, no reading. Just silence and the dark.

Bryan: So what am I supposed to do?

Me: Lay down.

......5 minutes later....

Me: Bryan! No cell phones!! Just disconnect for a while with me!!!

Bryan: So you just want me to lay here alone?

Me: You aren't alone! I'm right here. Shhh.

Bryan: (sigh)

Cali: (groan)

Lily: (meow)

Bryan: Let's go watch that movie!

Duey: (Grrrrrr....)

Me: (sigh) No! I can't. I'm so tired.

We all ended up staying in the room for the rest of the evening until Bryan went to shut down the house. I never moved. Not even to go to the bathroom after drinking all that water. I slept all night. But when I woke up?

I felt like Hulk... or a vampire or something. I woke up from the dead and I tore off my shirt while screaming, "AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!" And Bryan was like, "IT'S ALIVE!!!!" Except he was more like, "Hey babe, how'd you sleep." Same diff.

I feel ah-mazing. Like I can tackle the world! Which I pretty much have to tonight. I have a ton of errands to run and then I've gotta get my house cleaned up and laundry done. I'm also hoping to take pictures of the living room tonight to post them. It might have to wait until tomorrow.

I'm going grocery shopping tonight so that I can make some snacks for Superbowl Sunday. Bryan and I will probably just watch movies all day and then watch the half-time show... We aren't really watch-sports-on-tv people. But we are eat-superbowl-snacks people!! Which explains why we are both chunky. :)

Over and out!

Water, I Love to Hate You.

I read in an article, I don't remember which one, that most Americans are extremely dehydrated and that most of the time, Americans 'thirst' mechanism goes off as a hunger pain because the body has been trained to know that the only liquids it might get are through the food process. (Because you usually drink when you eat.)

This was astounding to me. I think back on my days and realize that other than a cup of coffee in the morning for breakfast, some milk/juice or soda at lunch or dinner, that is all I drink. For the entire day.

Wow. Not okay! Oh, that article also says that drinking water throughout the day can help you lose weight, help you stay awake, help your hair grow, help your eye-sight, help your stiff joints/back AND keep your skin pretty.

And I wasn't even drinking a tenth of my eight 8oz glasses a day. I've been trying to remedy it. I have a water bottle at my desk and I constantly sip from it and replenish it from a Brita container I bought at Target. When I start to feel tired or I have blurred vision from sitting at the computer for so long, or I feel 'hungry', I drink water  instead. I just keep taking little sips, here and there. I've worked my way up to drink about a bottle and a half at work.

When I get home I fill up another bottle and I sip from that all night. My goal is to drink three bottles of water at work (16.9 oz bottle) and 2 bottles of water at home (20 oz bottle). So I would be consuming 90.7 fluid ounces of water a day. Plus when I drink juice, tea, soda, milk, etc.

What I have found is that there is a cycle. I noted down my thoughts this past week. (The times are averaged.)

• 8:45: Coffee... mmm...I could drink coffee all day every day. But I only get one cup, so it better be GOOD.
• 9:30: I only drank half my coffee. I could heat it back up or drink water. Chose water. Fill bottle. Ugh.
• 10:00: Got up to go the copier. Leg is super stiff from having it tucked under my other leg in a half Indian-position. Note to self: Stop tucking leg under other leg. Drink water.
• 10:45: Ate lunch with the girls. Forgot to grab water. Did not drink while eating. Guzzled water when I got back to desk.
• 11:30: Kids lunch time. Here we go. Sip water.
• 12:45: Talk to Jessica. Hate water. Won't ever drink any more. Its tasteless and disgusting. Took a drink of water.
• 1:45: OHMYGOD! IMSOTHIRSTY! GOINGTODIE!
• 1:47: Refilled water bottle with cold water. Drank 1/4 of bottle. Brain-freeze. Why did I DO that!
• 2:40: Took a sip of water, kids are almost gone for the day.
• 3:45 YAY! Almost time to leave. Holy crap I need to PEE. 
• 4:00 Leave work. 

This is how it goes just about every day. I waiver between water is the BEST THING EVER to this water is DISGUSTING; I can't drink any friggin' more water or I'm going to shoot myself in the foot with a water gun full of mud. 

Seriously, I have a love/hate relationship. All these people keep telling me, "Oh, just get some of those Crystal Light powder packages that transform your water into FLAVORED water." No. Just, no. Those are disgusting. I don't want to spend any money on water-enhancing products. I am not going to drink synthetic powder that is made up of chemicals and aspartame to make my water taste strawberry-ish or whatever. 

No. 

I can't tell you that I have had any miracles happen since I've become focused on drinking water. Seriously. The only thing I can really tell is that I'm water bloated as crap. Its like my body is holding on to every ounce of water that it can cling its little molecules to because it knows I'm probably going to go into dehydration again soon. My own body doesn't trust me. Sad days. 

The only real change is that I'm visiting the potty-room more often than usual. But I know I'm not where I should be because I'm still only going four, maybe five times a day (morning, work, after-work, during lounge time, before bed) when I used to go three, (morning, after work, before bed). 

I'm assuming this is not normal by gauging how often the teachers visit the restroom at work. Since my desk is right by it I can monitor the normal comings and goings. Although, many of our teachers have had kids so that messes my perimeters up a bit. 

Don't worry, its not lost on me that I am monitoring the bathroom usage at work to see if I'm normal. 

I'm fully aware that I'm a freaking weirdo.

Post Summary: I'm Ridiculously Talented at All Things Photography

I sold a necklace! That is one necklace more than I expected to sell. So, goooo me!

I have had a lot of hits, though. People are looking. Which is good, I suppose.

In other, more important news, I redecorated my living room this weekend. Full Disclosure: Denise and I redecorated my living room. She was my muscles. :)

Did I ever mention my World Market hutches obsession? Let me look back. Please hold.

I gave up.

Because I'm dedicated.


I'm gonna go with no; I did not tell you about the hutches from World Market. Which is unfortunate for two reasons. The first being, I have been obsessed with said hutches for about a year...or maybe a little over. The second...I was totes blogging when I first found them.

Luckily, this blog has never been solely centered on home decor so I did not fail.

A year ago, or maybe over, I found these hutches.

World Market Farmhouse Hutches via Decor Pad

They are beautiful. And $498 for just one. I would need two. Ouch. I couldn't pay that and I knew I couldn't get the hubs on board either. So, I watched...and I waited.

Two trips to Visalia ago, I saw that the hutches were on sale... for 50%. Ohhhh. Tempting. I kept talking to Bryan about it but alas, no go...and I waited.

The day, January 16. Where? World Market. What? Farmhouse Hutches. Price? $224.00 Also? Zero interest if you use your WM card. Which means by the end of Feb, those babies would be paid off, no problem.

Bryan said no. I was calm, I explained that for two 'trendy' pieces of big furniture that would last us a very long time at a price of two under the price of one? Come oooon. He scoffed. "Wait. Just wait until they are discontinued." "Fine." I said. "But I think we will end up regretting this decision." And that was it. I was sad. 

When I say that I was obsessed, I mean... I was ob-sess-ed. No joke. I checked on them weekly. Imagine my surprise when I went online the Thursday after that and they were gone. I freaked out. I called Visalia and they said, we only have the display. Sorry. 

The whole time I'm talking to them I'm texting Bryan:

Me: "OH MY WORD, THE HUTCHES ARE GONE."

Me: "VISALIA SAYS THEY ARE DISCONTINUED." 

Me: "I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS; WHY DID I LISTEN TO YOU?!"

I called Fresno.

Me: "VISALIA ONLY HAS THE DISPLAY" 

Me: "CALLING FRESNO RIGHT NOW IF THEY HAVE TWO I'M BUYING THEM."

Bryan: "What?! This was not an approved purchase!"

Me: "YOU TOLD ME TO WAIT UNTIL THEY ARE DISCONTINUED. I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU SAY I'M BUYING THEM."

Fresno: "We have two, in boxes."

Me: "Sold."

I now have two, fully assembled gorgeous hutches sitting in my living room. I win. 

But having those in there made me want to rearrange and fix the rest of the room. While it is not done (when is a room ever done?), it's much better. I'll take progress pictures tonight. Probably....soon. 

PS. In my campaign for hutches, I sent this to Bryan, text included:

"I'm so good at photoshop. I have more talents than you."

PSS. Yes, this was right around Christmas time. Yes, I know my house is messy. Yes I know my robe tie looks like a wonky drawing of a vagina. Don't judge me.

PSSS. Ten points if you can spot the cat.

PSSSS. In case you were wondering, my house is not crooked. It is not some built on a hill house. It is very level. These are my fine photography skills. They match my fine photoshop skills. I am a jack of many trades.